The Journal of Finance

The Journal of Finance publishes leading research across all the major fields of finance. It is one of the most widely cited journals in academic finance, and in all of economics. Each of the six issues per year reaches over 8,000 academics, finance professionals, libraries, and government and financial institutions around the world. The journal is the official publication of The American Finance Association, the premier academic organization devoted to the study and promotion of knowledge about financial economics.

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Search results: 4.

Capital Investment, Innovative Capacity, and Stock Returns

Published: 05/23/2016   |   DOI: 10.1111/jofi.12419

PRAVEEN KUMAR, DONGMEI LI

We study the dynamic implications of capital investment in innovative capacity (IC) on future stock returns, investment, and profitability by modeling the unique effects of IC investment on uncertain option generation/exercise and postexercise revenue. The model highlights the diverse effects of IC investment on expected returns in different postinvestment regimes and yields the novel prediction that, under the neoclassical assumption of nonincreasing revenue returns, IC investment is positively related to subsequent cumulative stock returns with a lag. The model also predicts a positive effect of IC investment on future investment and profitability. We find strong empirical support for these predictions.


Futures Manipulation with “Cash Settlement”

Published: 09/01/1992   |   DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.1992.tb04666.x

Praveen Kumar, DUANE J. SEPPI

This paper investigates the susceptibility of futures markets to price manipulation in a two‐period model with asymmetric information and “cash settlement” futures contracts. Without “physical delivery,” strategies based on “corners” or “squeezes” are infeasible. However, uninformed investors still earn positive expected profits by establishing a futures position and then trading in the spot market to manipulate the spot price used to compute the cash settlement at delivery. We also show that as the number of manipulators grows, profits from manipulation fall to zero. However, even in the limit, manipulation still has a nontrivial impact on market liquidity. More broadly, we interpret manipulation as a form of endogenous “noise trading” which can arise in multiperiod security markets.


Boom and Gloom

Published: 02/03/2016   |   DOI: 10.1111/jofi.12391

PAUL POVEL, GIORGO SERTSIOS, RENÁTA KOSOVÁ, PRAVEEN KUMAR

We study the performance of investments made at different points of an investment cycle. We use a large data set covering hotels in the United States, with rich details on their location, characteristics, and performance. We find that hotels built during hotel construction booms underperform their peers. For hotels built during local hotel construction booms, this underperformance persists for several decades. We examine possible explanations for this long‐lasting underperformance. The evidence is consistent with information‐based herding explanations.


Leverage and the Cross‐Section of Equity Returns

Published: 02/11/2019   |   DOI: 10.1111/jofi.12758

HITESH DOSHI, KRIS JACOBS, PRAVEEN KUMAR, RAMON RABINOVITCH

Building on theoretical asset pricing literature, we examine the role of market risk and the size, book‐to‐market (BTM), and volatility anomalies in the cross‐section of unlevered equity returns. Compared with levered (stock) returns, unlevered market beta plays a more important role in explaining the cross‐section of unlevered equity returns, even after controlling for size and BTM. The size effect is weakened, while the value premium and the volatility puzzle virtually disappear for unlevered returns. We show that leverage induces heteroskedasticity in returns. Unlevering returns removes this pattern, which is otherwise difficult to address by controlling for leverage in regressions.